


Reinvention

by allonsys_girl



Series: Scenes from Baker Street [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, Johnlock - Freeform, Kissing, M/M, Making Out, POV John Watson, POV Sherlock Holmes, Revelations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-05
Updated: 2014-02-05
Packaged: 2018-01-11 06:49:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1169958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allonsys_girl/pseuds/allonsys_girl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Sherlock return home to Baker Street after solving a case, and realize they've always been more than flatmates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reinvention

“I can’t believe it was the butler.” 

“Yes.” Sherlock laughs loudly, his head falling back against the seat of the cab, feeling content and well trod. It had been a solid day of investigation, nothing terribly exciting, but with John tramping beside him once again, it was more than satisfying. “For once, it actually was the butler.” 

“That’s amazing. You’re amazing. I can’t believe you puzzled that out with just one cigarette end and half a chicken sandwich as evidence.” John laughs, too, leans his own head back, eyes closing. He’s been back at Baker Street a few days shy of a month, and everything has so easily fallen back into place. Cases, clients, take away, Mrs. Hudson popping in with cakes and biscuits, coffee over the kitchen table in the morning and tea in their chairs in the afternoons. It’s easy, and right, and HOME. 

“Well, the chicken sandwich was really the key. I would never have figured it out as quickly without it.” Sherlock’s laughing so hard now, his stomach hurts. Just looking at John laughing makes him laugh harder. 

“That was right divine intervention, that was. Finding a half a chicken sandwich under a hedge row.” Tears are streaming down John’s face, he’s fighting to catch his breath. 

“Oh, bloody hell, John.” Sherlock catches John’s eye, both of them gasping for breath, red cheeked and giggling. “We are the worst people. Someone just died, and here we are, cracking up over the goddamned chicken sandwich.”

John catches his bottom lip in his teeth, some unidentified feeling twisting through the laughter. “You would never have said that a few years ago.”

“Said what?” Sherlock’s still smiling broadly, but his brow is furrowed. John’s eyes are flashing blue, then black, street lights bouncing off them, his unbelievably long pale eyelashes casting shadows up on his eyelids. Sherlock can’t tear his eyes away from John’s, as happens so often with them.

“You would never have even thought about the fact that someone had died. It would just have been a case. You’ve really...changed, while you were away.” John knows Sherlock went through some really horrible things while he was gone, things that made him come back more emotional, more open, more willing to put himself out there, but they don’t discuss it. They just don’t do that, ask each other those kinds of probing questions. They’ve never done. 

Their eyes are searching each other’s. John inhales sharply, swallows. There’s a tension between them now, that same tension that rises up occasionally, and makes their normally effortless friendship deeply awkward.

“Well, everyone changes, John.” Sherlock’s fingers are curled on the seat, less than an inch away from John’s hand. It would be so simple, to just twist his fingers around John’s. See what happens. He breathes deep, grinds his teeth together, doesn’t do it. “You’ve changed.”

“I guess so. I’m certainly angrier.” John purses his lips, rolls his eyes, breaking the intensity of their stare. It’s always him who breaks it. The Stare, he thinks of it. Capitalized. When their eyes connect, and neither of them can look away. It always leaves John with a tight feeling in his stomach and a longing for...what, he’s not clear...but a longing for something more. 

Sherlock laughs, a slow guttural chuckle. “I didn’t say you’d changed for the better.”

That makes John laugh again, and the heavy mood in the cab lightens. It’s always been this way, the occasional moments when things got intense between them, and John didn’t know how to react, what was happening. But it’s happened much more frequently, since Sherlock was gone, and since everything went down with Mary and Magnussen. Since John’s been back at Baker Street.

Sherlock shooting Magnussen was the last thing John had expected that night. He didn’t really understand any of it, anything that had happened since Mary shot Sherlock. He had felt like he was being dragged along through a dark alley, and he couldn’t see what was around him. He had to grapple with what he’d married, find a way to understand why he chose her. Then Sherlock forcing him back to Mary was the most perplexing event. Sherlock’s deception on Christmas, drugging everyone...it just all seemed INSANE to John. He felt like he was living a bad spy film. After Sherlock shot Magnussen, it became even more like that; a whirlwind of hearings and secret meetings and Mycroft directing the entire thing, and John had never even gotten to see Sherlock until the day on the tarmac, the day they said goodbye. Again. 

He’d been so devastated by Sherlock’s leaving, by the idea that he might not ever see him again, he’d been nearly catatonic as they were saying goodbye. He couldn’t move, couldn’t talk past the painful lump in his throat. He was paralyzed by grief. They shook hands, Sherlock made a joke. And then he was gone. Until Moriarty’s face had appeared on telly and computer screens all over the country, and Sherlock was called back. When that plane turned around, John felt as if his soul was being restored to his body.

When it landed, he was unable to stop himself. Everything that had been tamped down during their goodbye came surging to the surface. The minute his eyes met Sherlock’s, they were migrating toward each other. Not running, but it was everything John could do to prevent himself from doing so. When they were in spitting distance, Sherlock closed the gap with two long strides, and John’s arms went around his neck, Sherlock’s hands fisted behind John’s shoulders.

“You sodding fucker. Goddamn you. You keep leaving me! Stop it, just STOP. You’re going to give me a fucking heart attack one day.” 

“John, I assure you, it is not by my design. I would never leave your side, if given my druthers.” 

They were both half crying, half laughing, overwhelmed with the moment. They stood there, completely entwined, shaking against each other with relief, until Mary cleared her throat loudly. They had snapped apart, as if an electric current had passed through them. John bit into his upper lip, rocked back on his heels, whipping his hands behind his back and clasping them. Sherlock straightened his scarf, looked away. 

And since then, all those electrically charged moments had happened much more often. And now, John has been at Baker Street for a month. Everything is moved from the house he shared with Mary. She’s moved, disappeared. Her mobile number is disconnected. John thinks of her, but not often. Mostly, the entire episode with Mary feels like a long ago nightmare, still frightening, but distant. 

The cab pulls up outside Baker Street. John gets out first, Sherlock scrambling out behind him, tossing bills at the cabbie. John finds his keys first, unlocks the door, and they tumble inside, still laughing over the last joke shared in the car. 

“Christ, you make me laugh, Sherlock.” John leans against the entry hall wall, just as they did that very first night, so long ago. The night Sherlock had made John realise he didn’t need his cane, and that they’d first shared laughter and dinner, and all the hallmarks of their relationship. The night that had started it all. 

“And you, John.” Sherlock slumps beside John, turns his head and grins. John’s stomach flutters. You should NOT feel this way when your best friend smiles at you, he thinks for the thousandth time. 

John’s gaze falls to Sherlock’s mouth. His lips are chapped, dry, but full and expressive as ever. Slightly parted, still smiling, breathing through them. Sherlock’s still as a stone, except for his chest heaving. He’s breathing heavily.

Sherlock’s head tips toward John’s.

“What’re you...what’re doing, Sherlock?” John’s tongue darts out between his lips, eyes flashing back up to meet Sherlock’s.

“Nothing.” Sherlock jerks his head backwards, rips his gaze away from John’s. “Hungry?”

John licks his lips again, heart pumping fast. Bloody hell. This is getting ridiculous. John feels something breaking apart in him, some kind of resolve he’s held on to for no real reason. He closes his eyes, wrestling with himself. He’s never...never thought about another bloke the way he thinks about Sherlock. He’s always tried so hard to deny it, even within himself. 

But he wanted Sherlock to kiss him just then. He did. There’s no denying the breathless feeling that rose in him, the tightening in his stomach, the tingling at the nape of his neck, when he saw Sherlock’s head leaning in. His eyes were dark and heavy lidded, and he’d known immediately what was about to happen. And he wanted it. 

“No. Not hungry.” John looks up at Sherlock. Their faces drift toward each other. “Sherlock. Were you about to...to kiss me?” Just voicing that aloud makes John’s stomach drop like he’s on a roller coaster.

Sherlock swallows, shuts his eyes. He can feel colour rising in his cheeks. “Would you want me to?”

“I think so, yes.” John’s biting his lip raw. These are all the things they’ve never said. All the thoughts that have lingered at the backs of their minds, the urges to lay a head in a warm lap, to take the other’s hand while they’re walking, a forehead pressed to a shoulder in a cab. They’ve never touched each other that way, but it’s always been there, the idea that they could, if one of them would just stop resisting so hard. John had no idea why this should be emerging right now, on some random evening after a boring murder case. That’s how life is, I suppose, thinks John. It’s never an exceptional moment until it’s made one. 

Sherlock moves forward, rolling his shoulders off the wall, until he’s standing in front of John, the fronts of their jackets touching. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s wanted this, known he’s wanted this, since the first second he saw John with Mary, and a flare of jealousy and sorrow ignited in him, pushing everything else away. Mine. That was the neanderthal thought he couldn’t delete. Mine. MINE. Repeating like a war drum in his head. 

But John had been happy. So Sherlock tried to make himself happy for John. Planning the wedding, making nice with Mary, making friends. This was the job of a best friend, which John said they were. But it was all excruciatingly painful, because Sherlock now knew they had always been so much more than that, and John’s love for Mary was a clear rejection of Sherlock. 

John’s reaches his hand to Sherlock’s chest, lays his palm warm over the scar. Without looking into Sherlock’s face. “Why? Why did you push me back to her? I still don’t understand. Especially if you...if you felt like this.”

Sherlock can’t look at John as he speaks, his eyes focused somewhere over his head, on the wallpaper. “I wanted you to be happy.”

“And you thought that I would be happy with the psychopath that shot my...you? Sherlock. You have the worst judgment when it comes to people. My god. WHY would you think I would be happy with her?” 

“Because she was so much like me. And I always thought, well, I always hoped, the only reason you didn’t want me was because you preferred women. So, I thought I could give you the female version of me, and you would be happy.” Sherlock is trying very hard now to keep his voice steady. 

“Sherlock. You are so stupid. She is nothing - NOTHING - like you. Nothing. Christ, how you could think that, I have no idea. She’s selfish and cold and calculating, and you’re selfless and kind and you’ve just done everything for me. You’re NOTHING like her.” John can’t even bring himself to say her name anymore.

“You’re nothing like her.” John repeats softly, and finally allows his eyes to drift up and meet Sherlock’s. Sherlock is looking down at him with an affection that’s devastatingly fierce and honest. Sherlock loves him. Is in love with him. He’s known, that this was probably how it was, since the wedding and the speech, and all the unspoken things that passed between them before Sherlock left the reception early. But now it’s there, in Sherlock’s eyes, genuine and sparking with want, and John can’t tell himself any more that it might not be true.

Sherlock’s hand wanders up tentatively to John’s shirt collar, still not touching his skin. He’s afraid. Afraid to do something to make this moment evaporate. John’s never allowed for this, the idea that they might. The look in his eyes has been there before. Many times. The love, the desire, but it’s never been something Sherlock could respond to, because he knew he’d be rejected, and then where would they be. But John’s not rejecting him now, and he’s terrified to do something that will make that happen.

John’s hand on Sherlock’s chest slides slowly up to the nape of his neck, his short fingers curling, massaging gently. John closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, then opens them again, resolution and acceptance in his blue eyes. 

Sherlock is still unsure, even as John’s strong hand is drawing him closer. “John?”

John’s mouth curls up in a slow smile. “I’m still not gay, you know. I’m really not.”

They’re so close, they’re breathing the same air. Soft shivers of anticipation are running through Sherlock, their noses are touching now. They stay like that for a long minute, John’s hand solid and strong on Sherlock’s neck, Sherlock’s hands fisted on John’s shirt collar. John rests his forehead against Sherlock, moves his head from side to side a little, their noses rubbing together. Sherlock’s eyes fall shut. He can hardly breathe. He can’t believe this is happening.

John tilts his head, nudges up into Sherlock’s mouth. It’s not quite a kiss yet. John’s breath is hot and sweet, his lips just parted. He pushes a bit more against Sherlock’s mouth, the hand that isn’t on Sherlock’s neck slipping to his waist. Their lips brush softly at first, tentatively. A slow careful movement, neither of them sure what happens after this. The gentle touch quickly shifts into something much hungrier, years of suppressed want finally being let loose.

John’s lips are parting Sherlock’s, his tongue slipping in between, pulling Sherlock up against him. Sherlock can’t get close enough, his body moving without his brain. His hands move from John’s collar into his hair, fingers carding through the short blonde strands. The tip of John’s tongue touches Sherlock’s, and it’s nothing but heat and white noise, the world falls away. They’re gasping against each other’s mouths, Sherlock’s pressing John against the entryway wall. John’s fingers digging into the back of Sherlock’s neck, their teeth crashing against each other’s. It’s a clumsy kiss, they’re falling all over each other, neither man knowing what to do with his hands, how far this is going to go and just wanting. Wanting more, just *more* of the other. 

After what could be hours, John breaks the kiss, allowing his body to relax into the wall, but doesn’t move his face very far from Sherlock’s. He talks against his mouth, their warm breath mingling, skin pressed together. “Oh Christ, Sherlock. Oh god. That was...intense.”

“John. I. I don’t want you to feel obligated to do this. You know how I feel, obviously, and you don’t need to reciprocate…” Sherlock’s already justifying, explaining it away, saving John the embarrassment. Anything to save John discomfort.

“Shut up, Sherlock. You utter wanker.” John has never felt more elated after a kiss in his life. This is what was missing. All these years, the uncomfortable silences, the odd longing glances…it was always this. “That was brilliant. I have never felt *obligated* to kiss someone in my entire life, and I wouldn’t start now. I wanted to. I didn’t know it, before now, or I did, but I wasn’t letting myself...whatever. I wanted to. I want to again.”

Before the last word is finished leaving his mouth, Sherlock’s is on top of his again. John melts into it, releasing all the worry he’s felt about this over the years, all the restraint. A conversation with Mrs. Hudson the night after the stag night from hell floats into his mind. “When you find the person you’re meant to be with…”

And of course, she’d been talking about Sherlock. 

He smiles against Sherlock’s lips, realizing now that’s exactly what she meant. He’d thought at the time, of course, they were discussing Mary, but of course they were talking about Sherlock. 

They kiss until they’re both breathless, hair standing out all over the place, faces scraped from each other’s stubble. They rest their foreheads together, Sherlock bent down, John’s face tilted up. John draws a finger over Sherlock’s face, down a sharp cheekbone, over the hollow beneath, to his lips. They both grin, and then break into laughter. 

“People will definitely talk now, John.” 

“Let them.”


End file.
